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1) Sherlock Holmes is a movie that appears to be an action-adventure film but has a significant scientific element as the villain, Lord Blackwood, uses various scientific tricks and illusions. 2) In the end, Sherlock debunks Blackwood's supposed "magic" by explaining various scientific explanations for Blackwood's tricks, including using specific compounds and early radio technology. 3) Blackwood's own staged death involved a body harness, ingesting a plant compound that can slow heart rate and breathing, and carefully staged destruction of his tomb, all of which Holmes deduced using scientific evidence and reasoning.

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Kimberly Molato
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1) Sherlock Holmes is a movie that appears to be an action-adventure film but has a significant scientific element as the villain, Lord Blackwood, uses various scientific tricks and illusions. 2) In the end, Sherlock debunks Blackwood's supposed "magic" by explaining various scientific explanations for Blackwood's tricks, including using specific compounds and early radio technology. 3) Blackwood's own staged death involved a body harness, ingesting a plant compound that can slow heart rate and breathing, and carefully staged destruction of his tomb, all of which Holmes deduced using scientific evidence and reasoning.

Uploaded by

Kimberly Molato
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Kimberly C.

Molato August 2, 2010

BSN 16 Mr. Jose Isaak Calamlam

Sherlock Holmes is a movie essentially structured as an action- adventure film.


Moreover, it seems that this movie has a lot of science to inspect. Specifically, the evil
Lord Blackwood has a few more tricks up to his sleeve. Dipping into chemistry,
pentagrams and other earliest forms of electricity, the plot is all over the place and I’m
not entirely certain I understand how it all fit together in the end.

At the end of the movie, Sherlock debunks Blackwood’s “magic”. First, Sir
Thomas, Blackwood’s father was killed by a poisonous compound that's activated by
water, bath powder and copper from the bath tub. The compound wasn't traced
because the police drained the water from the tub. Second, the U.S. ambassador
caught on fire by a combination of a substance on his clothes and a spark from firing his
gun. Third, those who were on Blackwood's side wouldn't have suffered if the cyanide
gas had been released in Parliament because they drank the antidote on the night that
the ambassador died. As it happens, there is a natural and easily obtained antidote to
cyanide poisoning: Vitamin B12. Regarding on the radio control apparatus with which
Blackwood intended to activate his device, the setting was in between 1887 and 1892.
Physicist Heinrich Hertz experimented with the first transmission and detection of radio
waves in 1886 and 1887. Therefore, Blackwood might be able to obtain a device, either
through successful contact with Hertz or through another inventor unknown to history.

About Blackwood’s faked death, it had three parts: 1) Hanging not by his neck,
but by a hook hidden in the rope attached to a body harness. 2) Ingesting a substance
called rhododendron (another ingredient found in the dwarf's lab). 3) Blackwood's tomb
wasn't destroyed from the inside; it was shattered in pieces, glued together and
shattered again. Holmes figured this out by examining the ingredients of the dwarf's
experiments and the tomb. The first and third are matters of good preparation. He paid
off his executioner, and had his minions break the stone in advance. The second one
turned out to be one of the examples of just how the writers of this movie did their
research. A substance found in rhododendron plants, called grayanotoxin that produces
a syndrome called “Mad Honey Disease”, just as Holmes labels it. Two of the symptoms
are low blood pressure and bradycardia (slowed heartbeat). Thus it is entirely possible
that he could seem to have no pulse.

That does it for Blackwood. There are other two things I wanted to emphasize.
The first one is the case of the counterclockwise circling flies. Early in the movie,
Holmes gets drunk off surgical anesthetic and spends some quality time with a jar of
flies and his violin. He discovers that while a chromatic scale has no effect, a sixth chord
causes all of them to fly in circles. Now, is there any effect of music of any sort of
insects of any type? The other one is When Holmes and Watson enter the lab of the
chemist that helped Lord Blackwood with all of his illusions, Holmes reasons that the
room "smells of sodium phosphate, among other aromas". I wonder if Sodium
phosphate is an aromatic compound.

Well, anyway, Sherlock Holmes deals more with science. It is good to know that
this is a kind of movie wherein it will make the audience puzzle out the mysteries behind
every scene. The story is very amazing. At first I thought it was the “black magic” of
Lord Blackwood that makes the story enigmatical only to find out that science is the
reason behind it.

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